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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist